An anticipatory democracy, according to its advocates, is one where the sciences, e.g. ecology, and betting mechanism? and market-based methods, e.g. prediction market?s, and judicial mechanism?s, e.g. science court?s, all have formal status and help provide future focus? to democratic decision making.

examples

The most robust prediction market that considers bets on major political questions is longbets.org?.

Anticipatory methods are used in industry now, e.g. hsx.com?, Yahoo Buzz Game?, and innumerable stock market game?s, all deployed as web services (and probably impossible to deploy any other way).

Their use in politics or for major decision making has been controversial largely because the scenario? approach has no fixed authority to take full responsibility for any decisions made. Some fear that any anticipatory forum becomes a battlefield of ideas.

problems

A primary question in anticipatory methods is the supposedly equal power relationship that applies between all particiapnts, especially the degree of respect accorded the views of legislators with special expertise in a domain.

How should they express their concerns, predictions, bets, or other contributions? Do they get a "head start" since they have spent more time on critical thought about the problems? Are some people to be priveleged, e.g. with more "starting revert currency"?

In the courtier? model that is often applied in a representative democracy, these people are answerable to no one other than a few people actually involved in decision making, which is no doubt more comfortable. But then the value of the wide consultation is lost.